


All For Naught

by NomDePlumLoki



Category: Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2 - Shakespeare, Henry V - Shakespeare, The Hollow Crown (2012)
Genre: M/M, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24411088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NomDePlumLoki/pseuds/NomDePlumLoki
Summary: Reposting some Hal and Ned I wrote a few years ago.
Relationships: Prince Hal (Shakespeare)/Edward "Ned" Poins
Kudos: 6





	All For Naught

All For Naught

Midnight is nothing to Hal. Two o’clock is an early night, four o’clock a regular occurrence and he’s fallen asleep past noon before now. But tonight his father calls it late, and all too soon it will be early and time to rise. They finish their council in the king’s tent, and Hal returns to his own where both Ned and bed await.  
“How now, squire,” Hal says, tossing a leather gauntlet at his lover as he enters the dark tent. Ned rouses quickly, dragging himself up from the bed and securing the tent flaps while Hal waits.  
It’s a warm July, but despite the heat, he won’t undress. Best to be ready. The armour, however, that must go.  
“Assist, assist, my good man. Help me undress.”  
It’s too dark to see Ned’s face but Hal imagines the devil in his eyes as he finishes tying the tent door. The devil has taken them both often enough for him to know the look: happy hunger, an impossible combination and yet it is the one that Hal thinks of when he and Ned are apart. Not that they are apart often.  
“Just the armour,” he says when Ned finally lays hands upon him.  
Ned yawns an acknowledgment, hands working swiftly in the dark as he unclasps and removes each piece. He leads Hal to the bed and sits him down upon it where it is easier to heft the heavy steel from his body. “Have you mail to spare for me tomorrow? A sword too, or tell me where to get one in the camp.”  
Hal has not expected the request, nor does he intend to honour it. Petty crimes and brawling in Eastcheap do not a warrior make. But a king...  
“You, Poins, are not a soldier. You’ll not fight.”  
“Why bring me here if not to stand beside you tomorrow?”  
Hal rises and reaches blindly into the dark for Ned, finding his shoulder first and then navigating by touch to his face. “You know why you’re with me,” he says softly, before adopting a mischievous, mocking tone with which he is far more comfortable. “Also, I have told my father you are my squire and signed your name as such in the register. You are in the king’s service now, specifically under the charge of me, the Prince of Wales. I cannot lose the man who will shine my sword for me after the battle.”  
“And if your blood is on Hotspur’s sword?”  
“I’ll break his sword and his head before he can unsheath. And when we are home you may squire me up to our room at the Boar’s Head and prick me yourself to teach me my lesson.”  
Hal drops his fingers to Ned’s hand, curling it up inside of his own. “Bed now.” He tugs Ned towards it, but the newly-appointed squire resists.  
“This does not sit well with me. Falstaff might be rogue enough to take what he can get from you, but not I. I’ll not have your money.  
“Must I settle with Mistress Quickly for your time tonight?”  
Ned tugs his hand away and moves away into the dark. Hal can make out the shadow of him in what little light the tent possesses, a small, hunched figure, pacing slowly in a tight circle like a rat trapped in a beer barrel. “I am content to be your friend for naught but friendship’s sake and if something happens to you...” He sighs. “Your last thought of me cannot be as a man who had his hand in your purse. It cannot.”  
If Hal dies tomorrow, he’s sure his last thought of Ned would be sweeter than that. “Squiring a prince is honest work and you are the only man for it.”  
“Which is why I must refuse.”   
“I’ll see to it that my father pays you well.”  
Ned’s snort of disgust is all the response Hal can expect. The gentleman, if he could ever be called such, has always been a madcap and proud one at that. In another life, perhaps, if they hadn’t met, Hal imagines Ned might be content to find profitable work or marry well or do something, anything better than piss his meagre allowance up the wall and help himself to whatever else he needed from anywhere but Hal’s purse.  
But they had met — what a night that was.   
“Fine,” Hal sighs. “I will make sure the king pays you in sack and sugar so you can keep up with Jack.”   
Ned says nothing, but he does return to the bed and sits down upon it, bending to pick up a sack of wine on the floor. Hal assumes it is stolen from the camp’s supply wagon either by Ned or someone he swapped a favour with. Ned holds it out to him, and Hal takes it and puts it aside.  
“Please, Ned. I’m not planning to die tomorrow, and one day I will be King of England. Take the work, no matter how lowly. Things will be easier for us if you’re at court, and you’ll need an income there. Even second brothers must eat.”  
Ned wraps an arm around Hal’s waist, head resting heavily on his shoulder. He takes so many liberties. Sometimes Hal thinks Ned refuses to acknowledge he’s a prince at all.   
“First brothers must drink,” Ned says.  
Hal has done all his drinking. “Not tonight,” he murmurs. “Not tonight.”

*****

Ned was at the tennis court trying to persuade the keeper to loan him a racket when the bells began to chime. King Harry is dead; long live King Harry. It was too late for tennis.  
The news of the arrests came next, followed him around Eastcheap as Hal’s men rounded up the rogues he was once closer to than his own brothers.  
Ned could not find it in his heart to care what happened to them. Falstaff was a vile pound of rancid butter, his associates twice as bad and with half the wit. Hang the lot of them, he’d be glad of it. Especially Falstaff. Hang him twice. He could go to the devil, but the devil likely kept better company.  
Ned kept no company. There had never been anyone but Hal worth consorting with, and now he was gone.   
At least the worst was over. And Hal had been a poor thief anyway, and a cruel drunk, worse than Falstaff when he put his mind to it. A ‘princely hypocrite’, indeed, and the whoreson had barely flinched when Ned said so.  
How Ned regretted those words now. He’d steep them in sack and eat them himself if he could. But to be talked of so, to be Hal’s ‘small beer’, to be treated no better than Falstaff by a man who’d been sweet honey to him so many nights until the crown had come between them, even before it rested on Hal’s head... The cursed crown took what it liked.  
So King Harry took the home and livelihood of everyone who worked in the Boar’s Head, and when they and the patrons were rounded up, Ned expected the guards to come for him too.  
They did not come.  
It’s not until now, ten months hence, when he finally stops the wrong man at Gads Hill but finds himself marched to the palace rather than the noose he sought, that he sees the King.  
Hal looks tired, so tired, and like he’s aged ten years rather than the ten months that separated them. But, sat on his throne, the crown on his head, he has dignity. There was little of that when they were together.  
“Leave us,” Hal tells the guard, who dutifully file from the throne room, leaving Ned a tiny, dirty rodent, alone in the centre of the grandeur, the King of all England in front of him. “And tell Lancaster that Edward Poins has been arrested. He need search no more for him.”  
Lancaster. Another of that line whose princely word amounted to naught. There’s not a man among them Ned would trust with a shilling. It’s a pity that hearts cost less than that.  
King Harry rises from his throne and approaches him, voice low as if he fears to be heard even by Ned. “Poins, where have you been? I have been driven half-mad worrying about you.”  
“Eastcheap. You’d have found me if you looked.”  
“I sent my men.”  
“You’d have found me if you looked.”  
Hal stops in front of him, looks him over. Ned’s hands are dusted grey with dirt, his dress torn and crusted with maroon flecks of dried blood, his face beaten purple by the guards before they took his name, but he’s not ashamed. Let the king see what he has done.  
Hal raises a hand to touch Ned’s face but seems to think better of it, whether through distaste or a desire not to wound Ned further, none could know but him. Ned cannot begin to imagine or understand such reticence from a man who kissed his swollen, bloody lips after many a vicious tavern brawl.  
“How could I search for you? You should have come to the palace.”  
“To be arrested or turned away?”  
“No. Be reasonable. I’d offered you work before. I tried to bring you to court. You should have come to me before it came to—” He gestures at Ned’s slovenly dress rather than his well-beaten face. “Before it came to this.”  
“Why? You acquired Falstaff a charge of foot once and I heard it said that when he came here for his due, he got it. King or not, you’ll not do that to me.”  
Something of the old Hal appears on the king’s face, but it’s Hal at his worst rather than his best. The jokes and the laughter, they’re long gone, but somewhere inside his vicious streak remains. “While I am king of this land under the eyes of God, I will punish every man who wronged me, and he wronged me most grievously and insulted my father. He nursed my every vice, suckled them on his fat tits until he sotted me with thievery and lies and lusts. He deserved what he got.”  
“You cannot say better than that about me.”  
“No. I never did.”  
Hal looks away, then returns to the safety of his throne. He’s king there, Ned thinks, and there’s space between them again.  
As he sits, Hal touches the crown upon his head, running his fingertips across the ridge worked around the edge of its band. “We both knew I’d be sat here one day.”  
Oh, Ned knew. How well he had known that each night could be their last together. How well he knew that this may be the final time they would ever speak.  
“What am I to do with you now?” Hal asks.  
“Put my head on a spike one last time. Make an example of me.”  
The king’s eyes roam over Ned again with less disappointment now. Perhaps Ned looks better from a distance.   
“You tempt me. You still tempt me.”  
“Good.”  
“My King!”  
Hal looks up but Ned doesn’t bother to turn. It's Lancaster storming through the door, his breeches full of shit no doubt, thinking Ned’s given away his plan to keep them apart.  
“Brother,” Hal says, sinking awkwardly back into his chair. “I sent word to call off your search for Poins, not a request for your presence.”  
“The guard told me he was here with you alone.”  
“What of it? Am I a maid who you must chaperone in the company of a man?”  
Lancaster flinches at the comment and Ned wonders which of the citizens King Harry banished gave them up. He rather suspects all of them did.   
“Harry, the man is a criminal.”  
“He is of better rank than the others and will be treated better accordingly.”  
“He is still one of them. You swore you’d let your past go. Our father would—”  
“Our father is dead,” Hal barks. “And I am king. And Poins will remain alone in my company while I wish it. He will be gone before midday tomorrow.”  
Lancaster approaches the throne, and they speak in hushed tones which Ned doesn’t strain to listen to. All he can think is that he will be gone tomorrow. The king offers him nothing more than a day’s rest on his way to Tyburn.  
Eventually Lancaster leaves and Hal follows him to the door, bolting it behind him. They cannot be disturbed now.  
Ned keeps his head down, eyes on the floor as Hal returns to him, refuses to shudder when he feels the king’s large, soldierly hands rest on his shoulders, fingers tickling the hair that sits around his neck. But when he feels Hal’s breath, hot and wet against the skin of his ear, he says, “Don’t. Keep your Judas kiss.”  
Hal freezes behind him but doesn’t move. “Fitting. You were my Christ and my confessor even when we played the devil.” His breath is still hot, lips close enough to touch if either of them move an inch.   
Ned can feel Hal’s body at his back. His Hal, his wicked Hal, the Hal who picked Jack Falstaff’s pocket and offered Ned the ring. The Hal who’d been both master and servant to him so many nights. He’d missed that body.  
“If you mean to have me then do it,” Ned whispers. “But don’t pretend you care for my company.”  
“I care much more than I ought.”  
“And yet that is still not enough.”  
Hal pushes Ned and he stumbles forward, turns to see fury on the face of the man he once adored.  
“I am the King of England. What else am I to do but sit upon that throne? Tell me!”  
For a moment Hal is terrifying. Lips flecked with spittle, teeth bared, eyes bulging from their sockets as he glares at Ned, the only man in England who’ll defy him now. The only man in Eastcheap who ever could and never did.  
There’s no answer to Hal’s question. Nothing that changes the way the world is for both of them. “I don’t know,” Ned says. He turns his head down. He can’t even look at Hal now.  
Hal snatches the crown from his head, thrusts his arm out as if he’ll toss it aside but it never leaves his hand. “No man knows. Not even I.” He places the crown back where it belongs. “It is my divine right not to know. But I must do what I must do, and you must go.”  
He comes closer again, and this time Ned doesn’t fight it. When Hal’s lips meet his own, he closes his eyes and goes back to their room at the Boar’s Head, the place they’d go to sleep off their sack and fuck each other and occasionally, when they were almost insensible, one of them might say he loved the other.   
In those days they’d struggle for dominance, but Ned lets Hal control the kiss. Hal is right, he is the King of England: what hope could Ned ever have of controlling him?  
Hal starts the kiss and ends it, stepping back and smudging the tiniest droplet that has formed in his eye. “You must go,” he says again. “You make me weak.”  
There’s the single chink, the words that embolden Ned to force his lips upon the king, steal breath from his lungs and resolve from his heart. It’s a fool’s errand, but for a moment he thinks maybe, just maybe, Hal might choose him over all this.  
Hal pushes back, gently, neither unkind nor impatient but determined enough that Ned understands it’s over. Hal isn’t that weak.  
“So, is it to be ten miles banishment?” Ned asks wearily. He’d sought the noose, but now he’s not sure what he’ll get. Whatever it is, it won’t be what he wants.   
“Further. I’ve an estate in the North—part of Harry Percy’s old lands—with a decent income. Call it my gift to you.”  
What wouldn’t Falstaff have given for that? The very thought disgusts Ned. “It is a gift to be sent from your person?”  
“For two hundred pounds a year, yes, it is a very generous gift.”  
“Doll would surely say so.”   
Hal’s lip curls, but he quickly shakes his head clear and Ned gets no satisfaction for the barb. “Thick as Tewkesbury Mustard: that’s what Falstaff said, wasn’t it? I’m beginning to think he’s right. Poins, are you honestly so witless you’ll throw your chance away to punish me? You cannot pay your way with stolen purses forever.”  
Pride couldn’t make a man stupid. There would always be purses to lift, and there would be other men too, worthier than their king. Ned never wanted anything Hal could offer him.   
“I never asked for a penny from you; never let you buy me a cup of beer; never sniffed at your sack. And I never told Falstaff you’d marry my sister, so if this is for her benefit, you need not worry. Keep your property.”  
“No.” Hal returns to his throne again, slouching in it now, legs wide, looking not quite comfortable, though he appears to be trying. “You will take the estate and the title of Baron, and you will leave London and go live a better life than you have.”  
“I liked my life. Our life. There is no ‘better’.”  
Hal nods, a gesture so small Ned almost misses it, but it’s there. “I once overheard Falstaff say, ‘Discretion is the better part of valour.’ Live as you will, but be discreet.”  
Ned fears he can no more be discreet than he can forget about Hal and walk away with his pay. “One more time, and you must listen. I don’t want anything from you and it is an insult for you to offer. No land. No title. I am not like the others.”  
“You’re not. But you have no choice. I always intended this, for you and me. Always.”  
“So you lay beneath me in our bed dreaming of my exile?”  
Hal meets his eye. “I lay there thinking I would always know where you are. Take the gift, Poins. You could not do it for me before, but this time, please. Take it.”  
Ned does.

*****

The King rides.   
He likes to ride, feeling it good exercise for the body and the mind, neither of which ought to be neglected. There are other advantages too. On a horse he’s taller, faster, deadlier, even. And he can be alone. There’s little privacy when you’re a king.  
The thrill, however, that has always been the real draw. Even a tamed beast is still a beast, be he broken or not. A man need only be tossed once and his life is over, England is some other fool’s responsibility, and he may go to heaven or hell for want of prayer or too much good living. Harry prays daily he will go to heaven for he knows all too well what he has done to some of the poor souls in hell.  
When the day of his death comes it will belong to God, not him. So he rides faster, harder, courting the excitement of danger that may hurt none but him.  
He doesn’t see the man step forward from the cover of a tree until it’s almost too late. Some nicely dressed noble appears in his path and Harry pulls hard on the reins, trying to slow and swerve his mount. It’s over in moments, the skittish horse coming to an uneasy stop beside the stupid bastard who got in its way.  
“The devil, man!” Harry barks at him, horse bucking, threatening to rear. It’s a hunter, not unused to calls, but it’s young and startled by the near collision.  
“Easy,” the noble says, reaching out tentatively and stroking the horse.  
Harry knows that voice. He knows the hand on his horse’s neck, knows the face that looks not at him but gives all its attention to the animal. He knows it all, though it has been years since he could claim to have known Ned Poins.  
“Easy,” Ned says again. “I’m sorry I scared you.”  
He’s addressing the horse so Harry does not respond and is glad for once to be allowed silence. If he’d met anyone but Ned he could have found the words to admonish them. But his heart pounds, his brain is addled, and he cannot speak.  
He can see, however. He can see how Ned’s face has softened since their last meeting. He can see how clean Ned’s hair is, the white of his skin and the expensive cut and cloth of his raiment. He can see a few faded bruises on Ned’s neck that could only have been left by an eager lover.  
“Poins.”  
Ned looks up at him without contempt or fear. “You remember my name, Your Majesty?”  
Harry could never forget it. “What are you doing here?”  
“Forgive me, but I had to see you.”  
Forgive him? Harry is beset by a tempest of emotions but forgiveness is not one of them. For the horse, yes, it will recover from its fright and that can be forgiven, but his own shock won’t abate so easily.  
“You can’t be here. You have to leave.”  
“Please, Your Majesty. I have come a long way. Let me speak.”  
Ned looks well for the travel, as if he has hardly been on the road. But he’s a man of property with money for baths and laundry. Harry wonders if Ned always appears so clean now or if this is for his benefit.  
“Go on.”  
For all he professes to have come for, Ned falters now he’s asked to speak. He stares up at Harry silently, no pleasure on his face at their meeting but no fear of it either. Just determination.   
“I’m sorry for what I’m about to tell you but it must be done for your own protection. And before I begin, let me swear to you that it brings my heart no joy to see you suffer for this.”  
“What is it?”  
Ned turns his face down. “Even out in the wilds we have news of the court. They say you’re close to Scroop.”  
London is close to York if you think about the distance to Rome but it is still two hundred miles. Scroop was friend enough to reject Harry’s single lapse of decency with good grace and discretion.  
“What do they say about us?”  
“That he is your favourite. Don’t worry, I’m the only man with a tongue who knows what that means.”  
Ned has come to him with another lover’s mark on his neck and accused him of the same, as if some petty jealousy should rouse either of them now. “So what do you want?” Harry asks. “More money for your silence?” When Ned sighs Harry says, “No, not that. An apology, I’ll wager. You were always so jealous of me around well-favoured youths. You never could stand the thought that another man should see the bottom of my soul. But you were too proud when I gave you your chance at court. It is you who forced us apart, not me.”  
Ned’s brows furrow, his mouth draws in so it’s little more than a tight line. “I come here as your humble servant.”  
“You come dressed like a popinjay, wearing another man’s mark of ownership on your neck. Do not pretend you are here humbly or for me.”  
Ned reaches up and touches his neck, his fingers pressing softly into his flesh as if he’s searching for the dull pain that will tell him where the marks are. “You asked for my discretion, not chastity,” he muttered.  
“I asked you to leave,” Harry replies, nudging his horse to walk on.  
He was only twenty yards closer to his castle when Ned called, “Hal, wait!”  
Even now the old familiarity brings him to a standstill. Falstaff coined the name, but Ned attached himself to it when they were alone. When they were with others they called each other Sweet and cared not what any man said about it, but Hal was somehow more precious. Sometimes Harry missed hearing it. He missed the intimacy. When decisions were tough, and his bed was cold, he even missed being Hal. Hal was always with Ned.  
Ned hurries to him, looking around now to make sure they are alone, though he’d given no care to their privacy only a moment before. Voice low, he says, “You must watch Scroop. He is part of a plot with Richard Earl and Thomas Grey to make Mortimer king. Mortimer knows nothing of it yet but they intend to approach him within the month.”  
It is a stranger tale than any Harry could have imagined, yet it comes from the lips of Ned Poins, who had always claimed himself the only man in England Harry could trust. That itself might qualify it as a lie, but Harry would rather have slept in a nest of vipers than imagine Ned the snake, even now. “If Mortimer does not know then what are they to gain? Give me a good answer.”  
“French gold spends just as well as English and Mortimer may not be so keen on France as you.”  
That is no lie, whatever the truth turns out to be. “How come you to know this? You have no dealings with any of those men.”  
“I need none. I have made it my business to know everything about your life and the people you surround yourself with. You can buy many tongues with two hundred a year.”  
No doubt he could. Secrets, fine clothes and a boy in his lap: that is how Harry will picture Ned now. If Ned speaks the truth and this turns out to be treason, he’ll get another handsome reward. Then he might afford a boy on each knee. Somehow that thought cuts less deep than picturing him with only one lover.  
“I thank you for your service to the crown, and I take heed of what you say. Now please, Poins, take your leave.”  
Ned reaches out and pats the horse one last time. “Ride safe, Your Majesty.”

*****

“There’s a gentleman to see you, sir. Says he’s ridden up from Eastcheap.”  
The servant’s words ring in Ned’s ears as he hurries back to the house from the church. There was only one gentleman amongst his acquaintance in Eastcheap, and he’d been praying for a word from him. A visit was more than he’d dared to hope.  
Ned had wrung what he could from the kitchen boy who’d been sent to fetch him. Hal arrived alone, tense, his horse weary. He had asked for small beer and for Ned to be brought most urgently, for he could not stay long and must be back on the road in a matter of hours. He’d asked to rest in the master’s private bedchamber, promising Ned would not mind. He had paid for their labour and their acquiescence in gold.  
This is how Ned finds him—sat on the bed, staring out the window into the kitchen garden below.  
“Hal?” he asks softly, closing the door behind him and taking a key from his belt to lock it. They need privacy here.  
Hal looks across at him but doesn’t leave the bed. “I had to bring you my thanks. You were right about Scroop and the others. Mortimer came to me when they approached him. I had them arrested two days ago. They will be executed next week.”  
“I’m sorry.”  
“So am I. I thought I’d surrounded myself with better men this time.”  
Better men. That’s the bitter root amongst the sweet. Hal came to him, came to his bedchamber, as a man who finally knew what it was to be betrayed. But he came with thanks, not an apology.  
Ned feels his stomach turn—the vile acid of shame at every dream he’d ever entertained about Hal. The king came to pay a debt but not the one that had cost Ned the most.   
“You must have been wicked once to be favoured with a friend worse than Falstaff,” Ned says, leaning back against the door.  
“I wonder now if he were really so bad.”  
“He lied to you. He lied about me. He tried to come between us, and it might have worked if he’d not left it so late to make his move against me.”  
Hal rises from the bed and walks slowly towards Ned. From this angle, in riding clothes that have seen at least two day and nights wear, muddied boots, and with no crown, he looks painfully familiar. The smell of him too, unwashed linen and beer on his breath, these are things Ned knows well. When Hal’s hand finds his shoulder, a solid, comforting weight, though the touch is gentle, the sickness in Ned’s stomach lightens, the churn becoming a flutter as his legs begin to feel weak and his head faint.  
Then Hal says, “I would have married your sister, you know. If I’d had to.”  
It’s not an apology, not even a kiss. It’s nothing, and Ned feels himself sicken once more. “No you wouldn’t,” he growls, shrugging Hal’s hand off his shoulder.  
“I would. I still will if that will show my gratitude to you now.”   
Ned has no idea if the girl is still alive, let alone a marriageable prospect. “How can you be so sure she’d have you?”  
Hal’s lips twist into a smile, bitter and small. “She may find my face lacking now, it being scarred and lined beyond my years, but I’ve much to recommend me. Money and property, and good friends.” He steps closer, presses his body against Ned and asks, “She’s a virtuous girl, is she not?”  
The heat of Hal and the weight of him, the weight of him against Ned’s chest and stomach and groin... Ned hasn’t been without another man’s attention for long, but he’s been without Hal’s affection for years. Even now, full of care and longing and resentment and disappointment, he is still in Hal’s thrall.   
“She’s better than me if that’s what you’re asking.”  
“I wonder if there is anyone better than you?”  
“Many a man and you know it.”   
Hal ignores him, brings his hand up again and this time presses it to Ned’s cheek, his thumb seeking out the moist heat of Ned’s mouth. He presses inside, then withdraws, wiping the spit across Ned’s lip as he does so.  
“You don’t know how I’ve wanted you behind me,” Hal says, “You don’t know what I have suffered without you.”  
But the words are too much because Ned knows the truth all too well. He’d paid good money to hear tales about the way Hal looked at Scroop, all the laughter and the merriment, and nothing sordid about it like they’d shared.  
“Get off me. You’re grateful, I understand. You don’t have to do this.”  
“O but I must.”  
Hal returns his thumb to Ned’s lip in time for Ned to shove his whole hand away.  
“Not with me.”  
“You’d deny your king?”  
“Yes. I would have gone to the depths of hell for my prince but I deny you, King Harry. And when you have had what you want from me and come to your senses, you will agree.”  
Eyes narrowing, Hal steps back, raising his hands in a gesture of submission Ned could not have dared to expect. “I tried to put aside all vice when I became king, but I never wanted to give you up, Poins. I couldn’t have kept you like a queen, but I would still have bedded you so.”  
“But my prince let me have him until he mewled like a maid and shivered in my arms and lied to me more skilfully than any man before or since. He promised me he loved me above all other men. You won’t do that.”  
“No.”   
Hal lowers his arms, crosses them over his chest. He seems to have had enough. “I’ll be in France before the month is out. Will you join me? War is a place I could use an honest man.”  
“To fight?”  
“You’re still no soldier.”  
“No squire either. There’s nothing for me in your life.”  
Hal turns and moves back to the bed, shedding his cloak, then his belt, then his shirt. “Ned Poins. Sweet, sweet Ned Poins. You have done me a great service and I will not be ashamed to tell any man of it.”  
“Then tell them.”  
“I will.”  
He won’t, Ned would bet his horse upon it. But Hal continues to undress, and when Ned sees shiny red welts on his skin, scars they earnt together in brawls and others Hal earnt alone in battle, the decision is easier. Ned finds his legs take him across the room, his hands touch the places he remembers so well, lips following in his fingers’ wake. He serves his king, just as he always did and probably always will. In the end, all the pride in the world can’t conquer love.  
Hal helps him come off too. A king’s mouth turns out to be no better or worse than a prince’s, and the satisfaction is as it ever was—almost purely physical. Hal never could give Ned what he truly wanted.  
When it is over, and they are dressed, Hal takes his leave. He kisses Ned one more time and then looks around the room. In a respectful tone, he says, “You’ve done well out of me.”  
Any man would say that was true, but Ned cannot bring himself to agree. Hand to his heart, he says, “You haven’t bought this.”   
Hal nods. He’s King Harry again, and Ned almost hates him for the crown as much as the duty he bears to his country. Harry is calm now, unruffled by the insult. They both know he could never even attempt to buy Ned’s heart.   
He has always had it for naught.


End file.
